My husband and I went on a 3 week trip starting in London, working our way North to Glasgow and then coming back by train. Here are the highlights and the lowlights.
The Crowdstrike glitch meant we were exhausted for the 1st few days of our trip, so take that into account. I had planned a morning flight to London from JFK, going to NY from ATL the day before. However, our flight to JFK was canceled and we wound up taking an overnight flight from Philadelphia instead - after about 24 hours spent in the Atl and Phl airports.
In London, we stayed at the Yotel near Farringdon. On the good side, it's not packed with tourists. You can walk from here to the South Bank, the Globe, & It's on the Elizabeth Line. There are a lot of good restaurants and pubs around. We had great meals at Vinoteca and Brutto in the neighborhood, and enjoyed the Brew Dog. On the downside, Farringdon is pretty far north from many points of interest. I hadn't really been prepared for how physically big London is and how difficult it can be to get from one part to another. We didn't make it to many museums I had wanted to go to because of how far they were from our hotel and other locations in our itinerary. We did go to the British museum for several hours on our 2nd day - amazing but very crowded. We went to both Wimbledon and Kew Gardens (on separate days.) We enjoyed both. We really liked the narrow boat ride from Camden Lock to Little Venice and had a great meal at Crocker's Folly after. We also enjoyed the boat ride to Kew from Westminster that people here recommended - thanks for this great idea. It was a real highlight!
From London we went to Stratford Upon Avon for one night to see a play at the RSC (Pericles). We enjoyed doing all the Shakespeare Birthplace trust activities. We ate dinner at the Dirty Duck, which was very pleasant and close to the theater. We stayed in the Hotel Indigo - great place.
From Stratford Upon Avon we went to a suburb outside Birmingham where we stayed with friends. They took us to the Winterbourne Estate, which was lovely. We spent only a few hours in Birmingham's city center, but we enjoyed walking through the jewelry quarter, visiting the pen museum, and going to the massive library.
Our next stop was Manchester, where we again stayed in an Indigo Hotel, this one near the station. It was pretty nice and very well located if you want to go to the football museum, the cathedral or Chetham's LIbrary. We enjoyed the Chetham's library tour. Another highlight was the "Rock and Goal" walking tour with host Joe. That was a really fun way to learn some of Manchester's history, combining stories about football and the Manchester music scene along with political history and street art. A kind of all-round experience.
From Manchester we went to Leeds in order to take the Carlisle-Settle railway. I somewhat regret doing this instead of just going from Manchester to Carlisle, though the view from the train was lovely. We weren't able to take advantage of the hop-off, hop-on ticket because the trains only go every 2 hours and we had a late start. I only recommend this trip if you get up early! We didn't wind up going to Hadrian's Wall or going anywhere in Carlisle b/c my husband was ill. Under different circumstances, I do think Carlisle would be a good hub for travel around the region.
From Carlisle we went to Glasgow. We were there for 8 days, mostly to attend a conference at the SEC the last five days of our trip. We stayed near the Central Station the entire time, first in a Yotel and then in the Ibis Styles. I liked the Ibis Styles a lot, the Yotel less so. There were no healthy food options nearby so we wound up eating M&S and Tesco takeout a few times. If I went to Glasgow again, I would want to stay closer to Finnieston where there are better dining options and more museums (Kelvingrove and Hunterian are both wonderful), though the area near GOMA was fun once we made our way there.
Posted by
Land of La
9218 posts
Thanks for the report!
Posted by
London
1251 posts
It's a shame you found Farringdon a bit far out. I'm used to being further out north and east. I think it takes a good six months of living in London to really get your bearings as to where one place is in relation to another. I would tend to think of Farringdon as really well connected and easy to get places, but that's my perception as a local.
Finnieston is a good shout. It's really come up and the food scene concentrated in that area is something not really seen before in Glasgow. Also, the trad music / Highlands influence in the pubs around there. I would lean towards recommending the west end over the city centre for many of the visitors to Glasgow that come from this forum.
Posted by
OP
Atlanta, GA
26 posts
I think Farringdon would have been fine if we'd had more energy and more days in London. When I think back on it, we really only had 4 days because our first day was totally lost to travel exhaustion. Two of our days involved going South outside to Wimbledon and Kew Gardens, so given those priorities it might have made more sense for us to have stayed near Paddington (as we did on our very last night in town when we returned from Glasgow by train to fly out of Heathrow). On the other two days, we did get to the British Museum and the Tate Modern, so we did do some museum-going, we just missed both the National Gallery and the Tate Britain. You can only do so much, but I feel like we would have done more if we hadn't felt lost and confused.
Another thing I found difficult was just navigating on foot, even with Google maps on my phone. It may be that it's difficult for those of us who aren't used to roundabouts. I had wanted to check out the Barbican, which appeared to be a short walk from our hotel on Clerkenwell road, but for some reason we didn't see it until we were trying to walk home from the Globe at night and I got us lost by going in the wrong direction down Little Britain so that we wound up near the Museum of London and finally got exasperated and called an Uber. Looking at the map now, I see we could have righted ourselves and walked back even then, but we were exhausted and cranky, and the area was dark and deserted.
Posted by
Southeastern US
2607 posts
Thanks for sharing, and LOL @ "I hadn't really been prepared for how physically big London is" Same here!